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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23574514">Eight of Swords</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland'>PostcardsfromTheoryland</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>April Tarot Card Prompts [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Voltron: Legendary Defender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Post-Episode: s02e08 The Blade of Marmora</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:02:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,632</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23574514</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Eight of Swords: Resignation, depression, self-imposed restriction</p><p>After the reveal of his Galra heritage, Keith tries to hide away from the team. Shiro takes exception to this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Keith &amp; Shiro (Voltron)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>April Tarot Card Prompts [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686346</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>98</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Eight of Swords</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Takes places immediately following the Queen of Cups.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he woke up in Red’s cockpit, achy but at least somewhat well-rested, Keith had a plan. It was a pretty simple plan: easy to remember, easy to follow.</p><p>Step 1: make yourself scarce<br/>
Step 2: avoid Allura at all costs<br/>
Step 3: be polite, cordial, and non-confrontational with everyone else<br/>
Step 4: eat, sleep, and train in the Red Lion</p><p>Keith figured that covered all the bases. If they never saw him work with a weapon in the training deck (if Allura would even let him), then maybe they wouldn’t think he was dangerous. If they didn’t see him eating, then maybe they wouldn’t think he was a waste of resources. If he never went back to his bunk, then no one could ambush him there. It had worked well enough with a few of his foster families, so why not here?</p><p>He felt Red grumble in displeasure with him, but brushed it off. She might have accepted him, but that certainly didn’t mean anyone else had.</p><p>Plan made, he snuck back out into the hangar and through the halls. It was still early morning, probably the equivalent of 5am, which meant he had the castle mostly to himself.</p><p>Perfect.</p><p>He made four trips between his room, the kitchens, and the Red Lion before anyone else woke up, and at the end of it he’d amassed a pretty decent stash of water, shelf-stable food, and bedding. He had his sketchbook, and his datapad, too, with a couple of books about Altean and Galran history he’d been meaning to read already loaded on. Staying out of the training deck was going to be frustrating, since it meant not fighting an actual opponent, but this could give him an opportunity to work on his forms and some strength-training. Besides, he still had to figure out exactly how this whole knife-sword thing worked, which was probably better done on his own.</p><p>He could do this. It was going to be fine. He had Red, and that was really all he needed.</p>
<hr/><p>Keith had to admit that he’d maybe lost track of time, a little bit.</p><p>He’d slept longer than normal the first couple days, his body still healing and his mind still coming to terms with the fact that he was <em>half-alien</em>. After that, it was anybody’s guess what time it actually was. He only left the safety of the Red Lion for necessities here and there, and he’d long since memorized most of the paths that the castle’s other occupants took most often, so it was pretty easy to avoid everyone else. The castle was always lit the same way, and it wasn’t as if Red had a clock on her dashboard, but Keith supposed it didn’t really matter what time or day it was.</p><p>He’d stumbled his way through the book on Altean history, fighting with an unwieldy translation the whole time, and then switched onto something Pidge had once described as “if a graphic novel about a Galra-version of <em>Dracula</em> bathed in the blood of <em>Peanuts</em> cartoon.” Not nearly as intellectual but a hell of a lot easier to read. He’d spent hours in the Lion’s hold, learning how to control the transformation of knife to sword and back again, memorizing its heft and the way it felt in his hands until it felt like an extension of his arm. He knew Kolivan and Antok had been scheduled to return to the Marmora base to coordinate and come up with some kind of plan, but he wondered if one of them could explain to him just how this thing worked.</p><p>All-in-all, things could be worse. He was lonely, sure, and just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and hadn’t really eaten that much because he was still kind of terrified about the others’ reactions and also the Alteans’ ideas of shelf-stable food was god-awful.</p><p>But this was fine.</p><p>He was currently tucked into one of the corners of the cockpit with a reasonably comfortable nest of pillows he’d liberated from the lounge, sipping on a juice pouch and trying to sketch what he remembered of the weird coyote-like creatures they’d seen on Olkarion. He just nearly had the curve of the snout perfect when Red suddenly jostled him, lowering down into a crouch.</p><p>“Hey!” he complained. “What are you doing?” She didn’t answer, but the reason became apparent when Shiro walked in, carrying two of the containers they’d dubbed “Altean tupperware.”</p><p>“Keith, I…” but he broke off, face falling as he took in the image before him. Anxiety started creeping into Keith’s veins, because <em>fuck</em>, this was his Lion and he was naturally a pretty clean person (borne of barely having any possessions after his dad died) but he’d still made a mess of the cockpit, there were a couple crumbs and some stuffing from one of the pillows when he’d accidentally turned the knife into a sowrd and cut into it, and his blanket was still draped over the chair.</p><p>“I know it’s a mess, I’m sorry, don’t worry, I’ll clean it.”</p><p>“Keith, are you...do you feel safer here?” Shiro asked haltingly. And yeah, he did, because Allura clearly hated him and she was sort of like the space version of Athena, but he wasn’t going to admit that.</p><p>“I just figured, you know, this way no one needs to deal with me. I’ll still be here for missions, I mean I’m right here anyways, but I thought it might be...better. If you and the others don’t need to worry about a...a Galra living with you.”</p><p>Shiro stared at him for what felt like at least five minutes, before he ever-so-slowly placed the two containers he was holding on the floor, and when he stood back up he was..crying?</p><p>“Shiro! What is…” Keith had half a second to panic as Shiro stalked toward him before he found himself swept into a hug.</p><p>“I misread this.”</p><p>“I’m sorry?” Keith said, because that seemed to be the safest thing to do in this situation.</p><p>“I thought you needed space,” Shiro whispered into his hair. “You’d just gotten a huge revelation and you seemed kind of shell-shocked about the whole thing, and Allura’s reaction wasn’t helping, and I really thought you just needed some time to yourself. But then you disappeared, you weren’t at meals, you never came to your room, I didn’t even know where you were until I saw Red’s particle barrier up. She didn’t let me in the first few times I tried so I thought you wanted to deal with things on your own for a bit, if I’d known you were cloistering yourself away just to make people feel less uncomfortable…”</p><p>“I thought…” Keith couldn’t really finish the thought, but luckily Shiro seemed to know what he was trying to say.</p><p>“I was surprised,” Shiro admitted. “I think everyone was, and we probably didn’t handle it as well as we should have. But I should have made sure you knew that those were <em>our</em> problems and not yours.”</p><p>“You just, shouldn’t need to deal with this. With me. I mean, the Galra kidnapped and tortured you, and now <em>I’m</em> Galra.”</p><p>“Ok, a couple things with that sentence. First off, just because the Galra did horrible things to me doesn’t make you somehow complicit. Or not even, the <em>Empire</em> did horrible things to me, since we’ve learned there are plenty of Galra fighting against Zarkon. I’ll make sure we all work on that language. Secondly, just because you learned about your mother now doesn’t mean you’ve somehow changed. You’re the same Keith I’ve always known, just with a little bit more understanding about your past. Ok?”</p><p>Keith didn’t really trust his voice right now, so he settled on nodding against Shiro’s shoulder.</p><p>“Ok. Anyways, I came in here because I haven’t seen you in over a week and Hunk made us some soup, and I thought maybe we could just sit and talk for a bit. Does that sound good?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Keith said, and Shiro let go of him for a moment, turning to pick the containers off the floor, spending a few seconds longer than necessary so both of them could try to dry their eyes.</p><p>“So,” Shiro began as he lifted the lids (and Keith was thankful again for the magical Altean tupperware that somehow kept things warm on its own), “Hunk has been stress-cooking a little, and he made a giant batch of this. It’s a traditional Galra soup called vyzshek, he got the recipe from Coran and we were all a bit concerned since you know, Coran’s idea of a good meal is kind of suspect, but it does actually taste good.” Something of Keith’s surprise must have shown on his face, because Shiro looked a little sad as he sat down on the floor of the cockpit with him. “Hunk is worried about you. We’re all worried.”</p><p>“Even Allura?” he couldn’t help but ask.</p><p>“Well...no. But Coran is working on her, and she’s had a few calls back and forth with Kolivan and she didn’t cuss him out in the last one, so, it’s a process. If you do feel safer here, I won’t make you leave, but please don’t move into your Lion on our account, ok? You deserve to exist within the castle walls just as much as the rest of us.” Keith considered that for a moment as he sipped on the soup. “Lance and Pidge are planning a movie marathon tonight,” Shiro needled.</p><p>“Ugh, fine,” but he was smiling as he said it. “Can we break into Coran’s alcohol stash again and play that drinking game Lance came up with for that weird horror movie with the demon llama things?”</p><p>“Don’t push your luck.”</p>
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